Friday, November 20, 2009

There is a lot of misplaced anger coming from many of our fellow progressives about Senate Democrats (which often is just shortened to "The Democrats") inability to pass a robust healthcare reform bill, climate change, etc.

However, I believe it's worth reminding folks that--as long as the Republican Senators hold together--we have to hold EVERY single Democratic Senator, including folks like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, which is usually impossible unless the legislation in question gets substantially watered down.

So, what we might end up with is a Senate Democratic Caucus that holds 98% of its members but still fails to pass healthcare reform, AND a mob of angry progressives who are screaming for the heads of "the Democrats." This isn't fair, but more importantly, it's self-defeating. If progressives REALLY want to transform America, they'll make an issue of the anti-democratic rules of the Senate which make real change virtually impossible. Blasting their elected Democratic officials, the vast majority of whom will vote for the Senate bill (and would also support a more robust public option if we didn't need 60 votes to achieve cloture), may make folks feel good, but is both short-sighted and stupid.

Lou Dobbs, late of CNN, was on the Daily Show last night. Jon greeted him, in fine style, with a Mariachi Band.

Ultimately, these long form interviews are always more informative than what they show on the TV. (Hey, TV is all about the clock, and the clock's word is law). Usually, you get to the heart of the matter in these extended interviews, and Jon's (actually considerable) interviewing skills usually bob to the surface.

That being said, Lou Dobbs is even more of a doucebag than I previously thought.

All the man does for the fifteen or so minutes he's on the air, is gripe and bitch. "Everyone" is getting it wrong. "Both sides" are to blame. "People" are frustrated.

And of course, he out and out lied about Health Care Polling.

All I saw, out of this toad of a human being is someone willing to exploit the fears, sorrows and anger of the moment, to drive a wedge between people, to say whatever he has to say, depending of course on stage he's on. All that matters to him is being in the spotlight. All that matters to him is being an alternative...but he doesn't say to what.

I think that the situation that I find genuinely frightening right now is that you have a ramping up of Biblical language, language from the anti-abortion movement for instance, death panels and this sort of thing, and what it's coalescing into is branding Obama as Hitler, as they have already called him. And something foreign to our shores, we're reminded of that, he's born in Kenya. As brown, as black, above all, as not us. He is Sarah Palin's "not a real American." But now, it turns out, he joins the ranks of the unjust kings of ancient Israel, unjust rulers to which all these Biblical allusions are directed who should be slaughtered, if not by God, then by just men. So there's a parallel here with Timothy McVeigh's t-shirt on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. He said the tree of liberty had to be watered by the blood of tyrants. That quote, we saw at a meeting where Obama was present carried on a placard by someone with a loaded weapon.

What this Blog is About

Fort McHenry defended Baltimore, Maryland (my home state) from the British Navy during the War of 1812. Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star Spangled Banner" while a prisoner on a British ship. The "rockets red glare" and "bombs bursting in air" were bursting over Fort McHenry. I've decided to use this blog as my own "Fort McHenry" for President Obama, using this space to occassionally defend and explain his actions.